This is the basic question of philosophy, to which I have a fairly simple answer.
Consciousness does not exist outside of matter, and there is proof of this. If consciousness existed outside of matter, then a person would receive consciousness as a certain program in a ready-made form from the outside. But this doesn't happen. Every adult will say that his consciousness was not given to him from the outside in a ready-made form, but it was created by him under the influence of many factors: social priorities (for example, in some Muslim countries people are deprived of choice and they are forced to choose only Islam), their moral values received from upbringing; their own interests; your own abilities; your temperament; your education; the presence or absence of a critical (analytical) mind. The evolution (change) of a person’s consciousness in the process of growing up proves that consciousness exists in a person and is created by him, and is not given from the outside in a ready-made form. Consequently, matter is primary, and human consciousness is secondary.
But a person’s consciousness influences the quality of the material (external) world in which this person lives. Therefore, human consciousness is primary in relation to the quality of the external world. If a person’s consciousness is of high quality, then the external world that a person creates around himself will be of high quality.
In the Bible, “God” is called the “Holy Spirit,” and the phrase “Holy Spirit” is figuratively translated as perfect (qualitative) consciousness. The Bible carries within itself a perfect consciousness (“All Scripture is inspired by God...”), and it was created for this purpose, so that every person would acquire a perfect (quality) consciousness (“The Holy Spirit” = wisdom), with the help of which he could create a quality world around himself. the material world and a qualitative (perfect) social structure - the dictatorship of the Law (allegorically: “God’s Kingdom on earth”).
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Based on your words, I made a completely opposite conclusion. The Holy Spirit is perfect consciousness. But the Spirit is not material, although it is the bearer of perfect consciousness. Matter is secondary in relation to the Spirit, which means consciousness is infused into a person from above, and it also determines the level of his purity, that is, wisdom, depending on the purity of his soul.
Somehow it turns out that way. Sorry. Although maybe I'm misunderstanding something...
Thank you!
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Matter or consciousness? What comes first?
This is a long-standing philosophical dispute between materialists and theologians.
Materialists believe that matter came first.
Theologians believe that consciousness (God, the holy spirit) appeared first.
My opinion is this: our science currently does not have a complete understanding of either matter or consciousness.
What happened at the very beginning, before the emergence of the Universe (before the Universal explosion and the formation of galaxies, stars, planets? Nothing, i.e. emptiness (cold vacuum)
But something cannot come from nothing. This means that vacuum is some kind of special form of matter. So the materialists are right? But let's wait to draw conclusions.
Let's consider the question of why the Universal explosion occurred, and one type of matter (vacuum) began to turn into another type of matter (stars and planets). Here we come to a simple answer - the Almighty did it) the Supreme Mind, the Holy Spirit). The following sentence immediately comes to mind: “In the beginning there was the word.” But who said it? Supreme Intelligence, the Most High, the Holy Spirit? So the theologians are right? But even now we will not draw quick conclusions.
In my opinion, the chain of matter and consciousness lacks two more words - information and energy. And these concepts are no less complex than matter and consciousness.
But what if we assume that information (a word, a thought) can itself be transformed into energy, and energy, in turn, is one of the forms of matter (or converted into matter). But this means there must be a primary source of information that gave this primary information impulse. In my opinion, this is the Supreme Mind - a permanent substance that theologians call God (the Most High).
Space is 95% dark matter and dark energy. And what do they know about these forms of matter (energy is also a special type of matter). Nothing. Modern science deals only with those areas that can bring profit (filling wallets) or discoveries in the field of war (and these are profits for military monopolies). At the same time, discoveries and research in military branches lead only to one thing - the destruction of man by man, the subjugation of weak countries by stronger ones. For this reason, it is not profitable for scientists to study the world around us (space).
As a result, I can draw one conclusion that our modern science still knows almost nothing about the world around us. And it seems to me that modern scientists and academicians do not strive to understand and study this world. This is clearly seen in historical science, which has been simplified to the limit and is not going to study the true history of the Earth and the peoples inhabiting it. Apparently this is very beneficial for modern historians.
It is better to keep the people ignorant (illiterate), it is easier to control them.
“Philosophers and scientists, in endless debates about the primacy of consciousness or matter, forgot that the concept of consciousness was used without any explanation. And if, for example, dialectical materialism gave a more or less acceptable explanation of matter as “OBJECTIVE REALITY GIVEN TO US IN SENSATIONS,” then with regard to consciousness they could not come up with anything better than to “explain” it with the HIGHEST QUALITATIVE STATE of that same “objective reality” ”, which “is given to us in sensations”. Isn't it amazing logic?
Idealists, in turn, did not go so far from such logic, preaching the primacy of consciousness, the absolute idea, the absolute, the logos, and ultimately the Lord God, who created the “objective reality” that surrounds us.
In general, I would like to draw attention to the fact that the question itself: “what comes first—matter or consciousness?” is absurd in itself. Just as the question of the primacy of the egg or the chicken is absurd. Just as there is no chicken without an egg, there is no egg without a chicken, so there is no consciousness without matter and matter without consciousness. Both of these concepts are simply INSEPARABLE AND DO NOT EXIST WITHOUT EACH OTHER. It’s just that the concept of matter is much broader than modern science imagines, and consciousness has many states that are qualitatively different from each other.
First of all, let's highlight the main criteria of consciousness:
- Awareness, distinguishing oneself as a carrier of consciousness from the environment.
- Harmonious interaction of the carrier of consciousness with the environment.
And if we consider a person through the prism of these criteria, we can determine the degree of his intelligence as a bearer of consciousness. And if everything is in perfect order for Homo Sapiens with isolating themselves from the entire surrounding nature, unfortunately, with harmonious interaction with the environment, things are very deplorable. Man has declared a real war on nature, instead of living in symbiosis with it. And for this there is absolutely no need to return to a wild state and expect from nature what it “wants” to give to a person.
It is necessary to know the laws of nature and, using this knowledge, to qualitatively change it so as not to disturb the harmony of the ecological system. And then it will become possible to control the planet’s climate, and control over its elements, and harmony with all other creatures who have no less, and maybe even more rights to breathe clean air, drink clean water and pass the baton of life to their descendants.
It is amazing that man looks at nature as a conqueror, and not as a child fed at her breast. And as long as this state of affairs continues, humanity must be considered a POTENTIALLY INTELLIGENT RACE, like a newly born child who has everything ahead of him. I would like to wish that the “infant phase” does not drag on for so long that there will be no one and no place to visit nature’s “kindergarten”...
Matter and consciousness, consciousness and matter. These two concepts contain unity and opposition. Consciousness implies rationality in the behavior of the bearer of consciousness. Reasonability, in turn, is manifested in the adequacy of reactions to processes occurring in the environment. Adequacy represents RATIONALITY, OPTIMALITY of certain reactions of the bearer of consciousness. Thus, one of the characteristics of consciousness is the RATIONALITY OF BEHAVIOR OF THE CARRIER OF CONSCIOUSNESS, which in any case is a MATERIAL OBJECT. In other words, CONSCIOUSNESS IS MANIFESTED IN MATTER ORGANIZED IN A CERTAIN WAY. It is only necessary to determine what the organization of matter should be in order for it to manifest certain elements of consciousness. Man is accustomed to dividing matter into living and non-living, forgetting that both one and the other are formed by the same atoms.
Moreover, any atom of living matter, sooner or later, will become part of non-living matter and vice versa, many atoms of inanimate matter will become part of living matter. Such a difference is determined only by the fact that the ratio of the masses of living and nonliving matter is not equivalent. Living matter makes up only a small part of the nonliving mass. However, both are completely capable of transforming into one another, the only difference being the SPATIAL ORGANIZATION AND QUALITATIVE STRUCTURE OF THESE MATERIALS. Thus, the qualitative difference between living and nonliving matter comes down to a DIFFERENCE IN THE SPATIAL ORGANIZATION AND QUALITATIVE STRUCTURE OF MATTER.
What comes first - matter or consciousness?
There is such a philosophical question that tormented the minds of great philosophers and torments many people to this day: “what comes first - matter or consciousness?” We will answer it from the position of our sublime knowledge about the world, and not from the position of materialism, which speaks only about physical phenomena. These are two big differences. The whole world is not limited to the physical, and even complete knowledge about it will in no way reveal to you all the processes taking place, but will only show their manifestation in this world. In answering this question, we will consider the picture as a whole, and not in individual parts.
First you need to understand what consciousness is. Consciousness observes, all our impulses emanate from it, which are reflected in the soul. All aspirations, all feelings. They then manifest themselves in our subtle bodies, causing various sensations. Consciousness is our true Self. Consciousness is inextricably linked with the rest of the world, since it is precisely this that underlies it. The concentration of consciousness's attention gives rise to matter in the form in which we are accustomed to perceive it. The wider a person’s consciousness, the more he interacts with the rest of the world and can influence it.
Consciousness does not appear and does not disappear, it is always there. Only the bodies and the “breadth” of consciousness change, which is a single whole, but divided into certain “slices” that are closely connected to each other. Consciousness can be represented as water in a closed vessel located in a vacuum: water can be in three states of aggregation, but it represents matter of different densities and shapes, and the atoms will always interact with each other and remain the same. Although this comparison is too crude, it gives an approximate idea of the essence of consciousness.
Even if we talk about the matter of the subtle worlds, then consciousness is still primary - it is embodied in them. And matter itself is a product of Divine consciousness. God is everything around us, and we live inside him, like cells in the body. If we talk specifically about physical matter, then taking into account the reincarnation of the soul, not only consciousness is primary, but also in some cases the personality. True, this does not happen often: in each incarnation the creature goes through a new “course” of development, so the personality undergoes significant changes, and the memory of past lives is erased, since many people are not ready to perceive it.
But from the point of view of crude materialism, matter will be primary. After all, there is no consciousness without a body. Although no one dares to make an unambiguous verdict, since not everything has yet been fully researched and studied, science is constantly discovering something new that does not always fit into old concepts.
We invite you to discuss
The age-old dispute about what comes first - consciousness or matter, has finally been resolved, and not in favor of the materialists. A cascade of the latest scientific discoveries by Nobel laureates Paul Davis, David Bohm and Ilya Prigogine has shown that, delving deeper into matter, you are faced with facts of its complete disappearance.
Swiss scientists from the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) went even further: they managed to simulate the “moment of creation” of matter from the non-material world. Experts have experimentally proven that a portion (quantum) of virtual waves, under certain conditions, forms certain particles, and with another interaction of the same waves, the particles completely disappear. Thus, scientists were able to create a mini-universe from almost nothing. This discovery proves that our world was indeed created from the void by some higher cosmic intelligence, or simply God.
By the way, with the help of retrospective modeling it was possible to calculate the age of the material Universe with an accuracy of a hundredth of a second. It was only 18 billion years. Before this, there was no matter at all in the vast expanses of Space!
The latest discoveries, in fact, did not bring us anything new, they only scientifically substantiated the truths that the ancients knew, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor Nikolai Melnikov comments on the discovery of Swiss scientists. Consciousness is primary, the cosmic mind is primary, which created the Universe and continues before our eyes, at every step, either to destroy matter or to create it again.
The material Universe holds together only because in the physical vacuum, in the unmanifested world, in the “higher intelligent forces” according to Tsiolkovsky, in the “noosphere” according to Vernadsky, there is absolute order.
Our whole life represents the dynamics of the creation and disappearance of matter. The same thing happens inside our body. Our consciousness, being a grain of cosmic intelligence, has enormous structure-forming properties. It creates a substance that is “created” inside and around us. However, human consciousness now appears to be so distorted by the incarnation that it is creating chaos. Hence the numerous diseases of the body and diseases of civilization - crises, wars, monstrous ecology...
“Devastation begins with devastation in the heads,” said Mikhail Bulgakov through the mouth of Professor Preobrazhensky in “Heart of a Dog.” The sleep of reason gives birth to monsters. An ugly consciousness generates only ugly things around.
But the meaning of human existence as a bearer of cosmic consciousness is cosmogenesis, the process of creation and development of the Universe - not destruction, but the spiritualization of matter.
The cosmist worldview equips a person with an awareness of his historical mission and responsibility in that segment of social development with which his own destiny is connected, but on which - in accordance with the personal contribution of each - the fate of subsequent generations also depends. He is the bearer and custodian of the material and spiritual wealth developed by his predecessors. He is the link between the past and the future. He is, finally, not just a representative of his people and his era. He is a planetary and cosmic being, connected by many inextricable and not yet fully identified threads with the Universe.
In the global tradition, the conclusion about the cosmic essence of man and his interaction with the biosphere and noosphere has long been formed and matured in line with ideas about the inextricable unity of the Macro- and Microcosm - the Universe and Man. Thinkers of all times and peoples tried not only to theoretically comprehend the great unity of the two cosmos, but also to present them visually and figuratively. A textbook example in this regard is the famous drawing by Leonardo da Vinci, where a man’s body appears to be bifurcated and inscribed simultaneously in a circle and a square. The circle is generally an almost ideal symbol for depicting infinity and eternity. The ancient Chinese also understood this to depict the unity of the endless and eternal cosmic principles of Yin and Yang (Male and Female) by small circles, intricately woven into the general cosmic circle. Thousands of years later, the great Russian artist and world-class thinker Nikolai Konstantinovich Roerich (1874-1947) visually combined the symbolism of East and West in the Banner of Peace he created, where, with the help of ideal geometric forms, the inseparability of the infinite and the eternal was recreated: in a large red circle, personifying eternity, three small red circles corresponding to the past, present and future.
In all spheres of material and spiritual life, everything depends on man, on the Microcosm, his specific potentials laid down by Nature and, ultimately, by the Cosmos. Passions, needs, interests are what drive people, and the energy of these driving forces is of universal origin. The entire infinite Cosmos closes on man, as the center of the Universe, permeating him with inexhaustible and mostly undecipherable information accumulated over the unlimited time of existence of the objective world. And a person has many channels, including those that are not yet in demand, for reading such information. The Microcosm exists so that the Macrocosm awakens in it. The Macrocosm exists in order to be realized in the Microcosm. They are indissoluble, and this unity is eternal.
Cosmic life energy
Many peoples, cultures, religions have recognized the presence of cosmic life energy since ancient times. There are different names for the same phenomenon:
And also: Biocosmic Energy, Universal Life Force, Fifth Force, X-Force, Tellurism, Telesma, Pneuma, Odic Force, and many others.
Modern science, studying questions of the universe, is still faced with an insoluble riddle, and many scientists in their research have reached the limits where they have only one explanation left: there is a certain intelligent force standing above the cosmic order, a certain kind of universal spirit that constantly creates from myself.
Such ideas are close to modern quantum physics. The theory of supergravity describes a single field, absolutely in equilibrium, only in variable relationships with itself, a field of pure intelligence, which produces from itself all forces and all matter, and thus forms the basis of the existing creation.
The above is completely consistent with what sages and enlightened ones have been repeating for thousands of years. They tell us again and again that there is a state of being from which all living things arose and which contains all creation. The energy of this state lives in everything, and it is precisely that universal life energy.
What is this mysterious energy, the very existence of which is still questioned by many scientists?
Russian scientists have established the presence of energy fields around living organisms of the most varied development. Almost all forms of energy known to physicists were found in these fields.
Modern science is accustomed to believing the readings of instruments, but instruments in the field of bioenergy were silent until recently. Thus, science has been able to partially grasp the oldest manifestations of the unusual capabilities of man only today. Moreover, at the level of the latest achievements of research technology.
If we recall the history of physics, forms of energy were discovered sequentially as scientific ideas and methods of their study developed. Volta and Galvani, who discovered electricity, would probably be stunned, if not believe in the supernatural, if they saw a modern color television or computer, although their work was based on ideas and phenomena arising from their own discoveries.
And no matter what achievements science achieves, something new will inevitably arise, going beyond the already known, perceived at first as a negation of what has already been achieved, but then, after more serious reflection, becoming a source of further development of industries and all science as a whole. And this fully relates to the doctrine of the unusual capabilities of man, to the bioenergy that underlies them - the most complex, and therefore delayed in its development, area of knowledge about Man in the Universe.
Only now has a progressive transition begun from the sweeping denial of the ancient experience of mankind, especially in the field of bioenergetics of the human body, which we are just learning to register with the help of equipment, to the full use of its rational components. We can only guess about the extent of the benefits of this thrifty and unbiased approach to historical experience and the deep capabilities of man for healthcare and other aspects of human life.
Science, as we know, is not an end in itself, but only a tool of humanity, created by it to expand interactions with the external environment and control the internal environment of the human body itself.
People at all times were very wary of everything new, they were afraid of the incomprehensible, not amenable to habitual, lived-in explanations, going beyond their own knowledge and skills. Only in recent decades, having become accustomed to the wonders of science and technology, people are beginning to understand that the unusual capabilities of man, with all their external wonder, cannot but have (even if not yet studied) objective, deep mechanisms that can and should be understood and wisely used .
